8 Airlines to form a new Alliance.. Arabesk .

MSYYZ · Post by **MSYYZ** » 19 Oct 2005, 00:25

The planned Arab air alliance is being created by eight airlines and is likely to be launched early next year.
The alliance is called Arabesk and is founded by eight Middle Eastern airlines with the aim of better schedule coordination, strengthening their marketing power and creating better connectivity.
The eight airlines are Gulf Air of Bahrain, Oman Air, Yemenia, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Royal Jordanian Airlines, Middle East Airlines of Lebanon, Egypt Air and Tunis Air.

None of these are members of any global alliance such as One World or Star Alliance. ( RJ joined one world recently )

Phase one includes schedule coordination to cover markets of the eight airlines and code-sharing, but the next phases would include other plans that the members may look at
Some of these airlines are really really small , others aren't that small .
The total number of airplanes of the combined airlines would be 244 .
Here is the breakdown :
Saudi Airlines : 101
Egypt Air : 35
Tunis Air : 32
Gulf Air : 29
Royal Jordanian : 19
Yemenia : 11
MEA : 9
Oman : 8
Gulf Air has a good presence in Asia plus they serve Australia .
Saudi Arabian Airlines has a very good presence in Asia as well .
Egypt Air has a good network in Europe , East Africa and they fly to the USA and Canada ( Montreal : only in the summer,so far ) .
Tunis Air is good in Europe and West Africa .

The alliance will have around 5000 weekly departure . International flights to and from the Middle East increased last year by 29.7% .
This Alliance along with the emerging of low cost no frills Airlines in the Middle East like Mena jet of Lebanon,Air Arabia of Emirates and Al Jazeera Airlines of Kuwait may be a real threat to the big Airlines like Qatar and Emirates .

Post by **sn26567** » 19 Oct 2005, 09:41

A good idea and a nice name "Arabesk".

But can such an alliance be profitable without relays in other oparts of the world?

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 19 Oct 2005, 10:31

I'm not sure what this is going to achieve really as some of these airlines code-share with eachother anyway.Also - what happens to the current codeshare agreements they already have?

Having flown MEA in the past year I would like to see them grow - they were truly excellent when flying from CDG - BEY return. Great food, PTV's and really friendly (and pretty stunning) FA's. Just like the country it serves really....it would be great if they joined skyteam fully!

SierraGolfDelta · Post by **SierraGolfDelta** » 19 Oct 2005, 11:48

chunk wrote:.... and really friendly (and pretty stunning) FA's. Just like the country it serves really....it would be great if they joined skyteam fully!

What do you want... middleeastern looks combined with french blood.... the perfect match.

Mind, I'm not french at all, but I like art and poetry when I see it!

P.

Vinnie-Winnie · Post by **Vinnie-Winnie** » 19 Oct 2005, 13:20

It's a good move although it reminds me of one cartel in the region: OPEP!

Could this lead to higher prices due to effective market control through a well established organisation?

Luckily low-cost airlines seem to have invaded the market so that might force these well established carriers to stay put!

(Sorry for this small micro-economics lesson

)

V-Bird · Post by **V-Bird** » 19 Oct 2005, 13:43

i read at www.oneworld.com that Royal Jordanian becomes a member in the oneworld ( BA ) alliance:

http://www.oneworld.com/pressroom/relea ... ectID=6017

SierraGolfDelta · Post by **SierraGolfDelta** » 19 Oct 2005, 13:54

The true value of alliences lies in the versatility of the worldwide members. These arab airlines more or less seem like competing airlines to me. I think Arabesk will not be into 'making traveling easy' but rather into 'price-regulation'.

I think Royal Jordanian has more to gain from a membership of OneWorld.

Buzz · Post by **Buzz** » 19 Oct 2005, 20:53

Sounds a bit like the Qualiflyer-situation to me... a group of small local airlines form an alliance... Doomed to fail if you ask me. The goal of a alliance, is to have global coverage without flying everywere. How will this help the carriers, except for price-regulation in intern markets?

A couple mergers would work better, but national boundaries would prevent that in that region...

vc-10 · Post by **vc-10** » 20 Oct 2005, 16:34

Why do BA and AA fly to JFK from Heathrow if the idea of an Alliance includes codesharing?

n5528p · Post by **n5528p** » 20 Oct 2005, 16:57

Buzz wrote:Sounds a bit like the Qualiflyer-situation to me... a group of small local airlines form an alliance... Doomed to fail if you ask me. The goal of a alliance, is to have global coverage without flying everywere. How will this help the carriers, except for price-regulation in intern markets?

A couple mergers would work better, but national boundaries would prevent that in that region...

I agree with you 100%, even more so about the part about Qualiyflyer. In fact Qualiflyer was more or less the next step after sharing codes on certain routes and not really an alliance... except maybe on transatlantic routes, but not even there.

Regards, Bernhard

Buzz · Post by **Buzz** » 20 Oct 2005, 19:13

vc-10 wrote:Why do BA and AA fly to JFK from Heathrow if the idea of an Alliance includes codesharing?

Because they both can do it and make money (?) ?

The codesharing-idea is that if one airline flies to smaller, less busy airfields X, Y & Z, the other airline doesn't have to fly there to offer service tot X, Y & Z. The airline just code-shares on the flights of the first airline.
Off course they will both compete for markets that are worth competing for...

Captain · Post by **Captain** » 22 Oct 2005, 16:49

vc-10 wrote:Why do BA and AA fly to JFK from Heathrow if the idea of an Alliance includes codesharing?

LHR-JFK is a very lucrative route for both AA and BA. They both make a lot of money (especially from Business travellers) on this route and have so far decided not to code share on this particular route. I was at Heathrow last week and flew to JFK with BA. They have 6 daily flights (747's and 777's) which are always 95% full. AA offers even more daily flights than BA + there is already a lot of competitions from Virgin Atlantic and United so the BA and AA wan't to retain their competitive advantage.

Captain